US residents may have noticed the recent War on Women being perpetrated in this country using the excuse of “religious freedom” to justify this rollback of women’s rights.

For the most recent installment of this assault on our rights, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer recently signed House Bill 2625, which authorizes employers with religious affiliations to refuse to cover contraception on their employees’ health insurance plans.

States Brewer about the bill:

In its final form, this bill is about nothing more than preserving the religious freedom to which we are all Constitutionally-entitled. Mandating that a religious institution provide a service in direct contradiction with its faith would represent an obvious encroachment upon the 1st Amendment.

Last week, the Kansas-based organization Operation Rescue posted papers from an abortion clinic on their website. The documents were not official patient records, but included names, ages, phone numbers, photocopies of driver’s licenses, sonograms, and other personal identifying information for 86 women and girls who received care in the month of April. While the group was nice enough to redact the names before publishing the documents for all to see, Operation Rescue is still in possession of that information – stolen information, of course.

Lately, legislation across the United States has been rife with various attacks on anything that gives women even a modicum of control over their bodies. President Obama caved on his administration’s mandate for contraceptive insurance coverage (and no women were allowed on a congressional panel on the matter), Illinois saw two anti-abortion bills pass, Utah is considering imposing a 3-day waiting period before abortions, and three states (Iowa, Texas, Virginia) have proposed (or have already passed) forcing women to have ultrasounds before they can obtain an abortion. In the last week, women everywhere began to realize just how much Republican men hate them when the news Virginia’s ultrasound bill made mainstream headlines. The word “trans-vaginal” had never seen such a limelight before this week.

In response to such “small government” conservative measures, a handful of female lawmakers have realized something recently too — how to wield satire against this crap.

An American law professor and former federal prosecutor writes in an Op/Ed for CNN that advances in technology, specifically the increasing ability of modern medicine to keep pre-term fetuses alive outside the womb, should spur corresponding changes in abortion law that would criminalize abortions earlier and earlier, based on the technology available at the time. While he doesn’t suggest how far he is willing to take his argument, specifically, whether women are just expected to sit back and watch as abortion rights shrink more and more as men’s technology and the male medical machine advance, he does make sure to mention that he’s “pro-choice” and a “progressive” about a dozen times.

Today, Malawian women protested after several women were brutally beaten and stripped naked by male street vendors for the offense of not-wearing-dresses in public.

Street vendors accused women of defying cultural norms and attacked them this week in Lilongwe and Blantyre, two of the nation’s largest cosmopolitan centers.

“They beat them up and stripped them naked, claiming they did not follow the tradition,” said Seodi White, a rights activist and protest organizer. “Attacking women in trousers is an outrage. We are a democracy, they’re taking us back to the dark ages.”

Protesters wore pants, miniskirts and leggings in a show of solidarity as they gathered to condemn the attacks.

While this protest may (or may not) evoke familiar imagery from last summer’s “SlutWalk” protests, unlike SlutWalk, this protest sticks to the issues, and makes it clear what they are getting at. Importantly, these women actually name the agent of harm: men, attacking women, out of contempt for women.

The Transgender action plan addresses some of the obstacles faced by transgender people in every aspect of public life, as well as identifying wider cultural issues. It provides a framework for communities to work with the government to challenge and overcome persisting inequalities.

The plan commits to reform Health services to ensure greater consistency in commissioning gender identity services; publish a clear and concise guide for health practitioners, including GPs and Primary Care Trusts, on the treatment and care available; [and] amend the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill to raise the starting point for murders motivated by hostility towards a transgender person from 15 to 30 years.

The announcement follows extensive engagement by the government with the transgender community, public bodies, practitioners and the voluntary sector.

Extensive engagement? Perhaps, but interestingly, they haven’t seemed to bother engaging with wimmin’s or lesbian health groups, child health and education groups, or even with a wide range of the transgender community. In other words, those who may’ve been critical of their Plan and those charged with advocating for girls and wimmin as a sexual class, around the world.

It’s no longer a secret that the British coalition ConDem government (Conservative/Liberal-Democrat, for the non-Brit readers) has been making a steady and concerted effort to put the women’s liberation movement back twenty five years. Think I’m exaggerating? Read on.

The Lib-Dems received a lot of support from the female electorate, women who would never have voted for the right-wing Conservatives, but were disillusioned by war-mongering New labour.

So let’s take a look at the way women have been treated in return for their troubles.

Wow, that FCM post on the dickwad self-proclaimed sperminator and “molester” sponsoring Baltimore SlutWalk really raised my blood pressure, and my awareness. Minutes later my spamtastic email informed me of today’s SlutWalk at the University of Connecticut. Well, who the hell’s sponsoring that one I wondered? Lordy, it’s co-sponsored by Matt Tuscano, a student at UConn.